


coffee, black

by eighteenavenues



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, M/M, Marauders, allusions to sexual situations but very PG/PG13 overall, coffee shop AU, gay babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5727391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eighteenavenues/pseuds/eighteenavenues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus’ throat feels like it is stuffed with cotton and his teeth worry a tear into his lower lip. “You’re beautiful and I’m-“</p><p>“More beautiful,” Sirius says, “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”</p><p>“I wear cardigans,” Remus tries to protest.</p><p>Sirius’ hands find the pockets on the front of the offending garment and sticks his hands inside, using the fabric to pull Remus impossibly closer. “I love your cardigans. I’ll buy you a thousand cardigans."</p>
            </blockquote>





	coffee, black

Here’s how it happens, or better, how it goes:

It goes like Sirius stealing sips of Remus’ coffee, complaining the brown is too light with milk, complaining that there is too much sugar, that the whole thing is too sweet. Sirius takes his coffee black, and he never fails to make the corresponding joke. It goes like Sirius pouring sugar with a heavy hand when Remus is gone, pretending that the mug is not a poor substitute for his lover’s lips. It goes like two people so achingly lonely that they fall together and it’s beautiful while it lasts, and they convince themselves it’ll last, and for all intents and purposes, it does last. It lasts with Sirius forever. And for Remus? Well, it lasts for Remus even longer than that.

It actually happens much less dramatically. It happens that Sirius wanders into the café where Remus works one day and chats him up. Sirius gives him a line, maybe Remus asks “what would you like?” and Sirius responds, “you.” Or maybe Sirius says something about liking Remus “a latte.” It’s unimportant. Sirius remembers his line as clever and Remus remembers wondering why he would even give the man a chance. Shitty line aside, Remus truly had no hesitations sitting down for a drink at the pub down the way later that night. 

The beer itself was a blur. Remus was too occupied with staring at Sirius’ cheekbones to think about how he doesn’t drink, to absorbed in each time Sirius would run his fingers through his long tangled hair to blame the spinning in his head on anything other than how intoxicating it was to be close to someone as gorgeous as Sirius Black.

And Sirius, for his part, was smitten instantly.

It happens that they talk for two hours. That Sirius notices how Remus’s chin keeps drooping and gently tells him no when he requests another beer. 

“Sorry, I don’t do this much,” Remus says. And there’s something like shame pinned to his cheekbones, so Sirius raises a thumb and strokes it away.

“It’s okay, I just don’t want you to get in,” he leans forward and Remus can feel Sirius’ breath on his lips, “over your head.”

His voice is so deep and so soft and his lips are right there, and so Remus bridges the last few inches of distance and gives him the ghost of a kiss. “Was that…?” he asks after pulling away immediately, horrified that he didn’t ask first.

Sirius’ eyes sparkle the kind of grey that lines the edges of shadows over a pond, just a little blue-green mixed into the slate. “It’s okay, but I don’t want to… not until you’re sober.”

Remus nods and Sirius does that thing again with his thumb where it glosses over Remus’ face. His touch is focused, as if he’s caressing something important, and Remus smiles and Sirius smiles.

And at some point, Remus is sober and at that point they do spend every available moment kissing.

And the time flies by and oh, oh god. It is easy, all of it is effortless, for the first time in either of their lives.

Which is, of course, what goes wrong.

If falling together was easy, if falling together was like they had been made to fit against each other, two people cut from the same cloth, falling apart lacked all of that grace.

Falling apart went something like Remus’ insecurities coming rushing back to him and knocking him on his ass. It went something like him remembering that he is bird-boned and sad, and that beautiful people don’t usually think much of him. It went something like him seeing Sirius wink at someone else, and remembering that Sirius’ charm wasn’t something he had a monopoly on.

Falling apart looked like Remus turning to ice and Sirius raging a fire against walls that never existed before. Falling apart looked like Remus turning mute to his secret keeper, his other half.

And Sirius, the lovely man with a mouth greedy for kissing, occupied himself with yelling, with nursing old wounds. The fear of abandonment runs deeply for men who have been left by everyone before. And if he was more rational, or if Remus was less cold, he could’ve said something like, “I love you but you’re scaring me.”

And, if he said that, Remus would’ve agreed.

But he said nothing and Remus said nothing because he didn’t know what he was supposed to say to the Adonis who occupied his bed sometimes.

And Sirius slammed doors and Remus disappeared into walls and then the toothbrush Remus had been leaving in the bathroom at Sirius’ flat disappeared. And that was it.

Until it wasn’t. Until Remus sees Sirius walking past the coffee shop every day at 2:00pm, his hands jammed in his pockets and his head down. He never comes in, never even looks Remus’ way, but he faithfully walks past. Remus knows the shop is four tube stops away from Sirius’ flat, that there’s no reason for the man to be anywhere near. And it makes his heart ache more and less, somehow.

And so, two weeks after Sirius became a sulking shadow in Remus’ life, Remus makes a coffee at 1:55pm and waits.

At 2:00pm on the dot, Sirius walks by. Remus hurries outside, taking a gamble and leaving the cash register unguarded.

He jams the coffee into Sirius’ hands. “I miss you,” he mumbles, “I miss you a latte.”

And Sirius takes a sip and spits the coffee out onto the ground. “It’s like drinking pure sugar,” he says.

Remus shrugs in apology. 

And somehow the coffee ends up spilled all over the pavement and Remus ends up held in the tightest embrace he’s ever experienced and Sirius ends up breathing in the spicy scent of Remus’ shampoo.

“You know I would never, not with anyone else,” Sirius says.

Remus’ throat feels like it is stuffed with cotton and his teeth worry a tear into his lower lip. “You’re beautiful and I’m-“

“More beautiful,” Sirius says, “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I wear cardigans,” Remus tries to protest.

Sirius’ hands find the pockets on the front of the offending garment and sticks his hands inside, using the fabric to pull Remus impossibly closer. “I love your cardigans. I’ll buy you a thousand cardigans. I’ll take them all off of you, but you can wear them before that.”

Remus quirks an eyebrow and Sirius doesn’t bat an eye.

“You’re shameless, you know,” Remus tells him. “Like when you used that god-awful pick up line on me.”

“It charmed you,” Sirius says.

“You charm me,” Remus says, and they’re kissing and Sirius tastes like coffee with too much sugar and Remus knows he didn’t have enough of the latte to have picked up the taste from that.

And nobody does steal anything from the cash register, though the queue is fairly long by the time Remus pulls himself away from his lover’s lips to go finish his shift.

Better than how it happened, here’s how it goes:

It goes like Remus moving his modest trunk of belongings into Sirius’ flat, the toothbrush finding its spot by the sink and his cardigans finding their spot in the closet. It goes like Sirius exaggerating rudeness to everyone he meets when Remus is around to witness, just so no one could possibly find it charming. It goes like Remus telling him that he’s being ridiculous and Sirius telling him that he had been ridiculous when this was originally a problem and this could be World War III, and for a heartbeat Sirius thinks he’s going to be left alone again, but Remus nods in agreement. 

It goes like Sirius knowing which of Remus’ muscles ache after a long shift, and knowing how much pressure to use when kneading them back to tender looseness. And it goes like Remus making Sirius’ coffee correctly, for once, until Sirius takes a sip and then, wordlessly, dumps in four packages of sugar and a heavy splash of milk.

And it goes like that forever, although not without effort. But it just so happens that Sirius likes Remus enough to expend that effort, and Remus, well, Remus doesn’t think Sirius is so bad at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to be doing my homework and instead I'm having Feelings about my precious gay babies.


End file.
